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Oscar honors are up in the air after a strong year for film

If only the Academy Award's neck-and-neck contest between Alfonso Cuarón's 3-D, science nonfiction wonder and Steve McQueen's shattering "12 Years a Slave" were so simple. After all, the two excellent films share, along with a few other best- picture contenders, the theme of existential crisis.

When the best-picture Oscar winner is announced on stage at the Dolby Theatre tonight, it really should come as a revelation. And there are likely to be a few others during the 86th Academy Awards telecast, which begins on ABC, starting at 5 p.m.

Final voting ended Tuesday at 5 p.m. Let's just say "Whew." What an award season our 8.5-pound golden boy has had.

If he tried to take his cues from the kudos of critics groups, he'd have found little clarity. They doled out their affections far and wide.

A quick recap: First, the New York Film Critics Circle tweaked the conversation some when it threw its weight behind "American Hustle" as the best film, but kept things interesting by awarding McQueen best director.

The next day, the National Board of Review named Spike Jonze's bittersweet dystopian romance, "Her," the best. Not to be outdone, even if it brings up the rear, the National Society of Film Critics (of which I'm a member) bestowed its stubborn, if honorable, love on the Coen Brothers' folkie tale "Inside Llewyn Davis."

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The Golden Globes went to "12 Years" and Cuarón. Ditto the recent British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards.

You get the picture: It's not quite in focus.

One could make the mistake of thinking the absence of a clear front-runner for the Oscar is a sign of a weak year.

Yet, 2013 was anything but. While it does not rival 2007's roiling, grim, resonant best films, last year offered moviegoers more heady, artistically satisfying and entertaining options. Worthy movies not nominated include "Rush," "The Butler," "Inside Llewyn Davis," for starters.

This will be the first year voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — all 6,028 of them — can cast their ballots in all categories.

Arguably, the Academy Awards are the premiere way the film industry communicates its soul to the rest of us, not its more craven market-driven hankerings but its art/industry/technology ambitions.

More voters weighing in could clue us in better to what Hollywood's thinking these days about its story-telling and money-making role both at home and globally (the telecast will be seen in more than 225 countries).

And this year's Oscar conversation cuts a little closer to home. A question hanging in the balance tonight is: Will the Telluride Film Festival continue its status as diviner of the best-picture victor?

Since 2008, the festival — which celebrated its 40th installment last September — has been the launch pad for films that have gone on to claim the best-picture Oscar.

"Slumdog Millionaire" started things. Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker," provided a bump (it premiered at Toronto) before Telluride gained impressive speed with "The King's Speech," "The Artist" and "Argo."

In September, "12 Years a Slave" producer Brad Pitt, director McQueen and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o and Michael Fassbender flew to Colorado to screen the film in front of its first public audience. Will tonight's awards keep the record going?

If "Gravity" should best "12 Years a Slave" or Matthew McConaughey win once again over Ejiofor, I won't lose sleep. You can't always say that about the Oscars.

Yes, this has been a year of first-rate films that have engaged our existential aches, pondering with artistic grace, what it means to be human. Even David O. Russell's vivid, vivacious ride "American Hustle" celebrates this conundrum.

What tonight's awards mean for the future of cinema (with television dramas breathing down its artistic neck) remains to be seen. We still count ourselves lucky when summer brings some well- seasoned popcorn fare.

As for cinema's past? Tonight's "In Memoriam" tribute has turned out to be an especially sorrow-laden challenge, given the recent loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Harold Ramis. Not to mention the deaths of James Gandolfini, Roger Ebert, Joan Fontaine, Elmore Leonard, former Academy prez Tom Sherak, Esther Williams, photographer Bert Stern, Peter O'Toole, and Shirley Temple Black. They deserve a graceful send-off from their peers and their audience.

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